News, views, food, books and other writings, with the assist of character dolls. My art blog, dealing with fine art, exhibits and works in progress, is http://beautifulmetaphor.blogspot.com.
Please note that all pictures and text are copyright to Liz Adams, and may not be used in any form without explicit permission. Thank you for respecting my ownership.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Long Fall Walk, now that cool weather is back

I walk most days, and the distance varies with the weather and what I'm up for.

This is one of my favorite ones, a couple of miles round trip up a walking path, back via the park, no backtracking, just a sort of flattened circle. And there are woods to one side, always interesting with birds and small animals.

I haven't been up for this distance in a while, partly because of the heat, and partly because I was a bit tired from allergies. So this was a nice return.

And it spurred me on to dig out my pedometer, find it needed a new battery, discover the backup I had was the wrong size, take a trip to the store,where it took two obliging employees to search their stock, then go online to check on equivalencies and finally find me the right one, which is now installed.

Handsome Son gave me this ped. years ago when I was interested in seeing what distances I actually walked, rather than setting a goal. I was just interested in knowing how much of a walk I did in the half hour I usually spent. Found it was a shade under two miles, not too bad, really, done regularly. It certainly does a lot for my spirits.

One time I clipped it on during a working day caregiving and found that in this small house, I clocked over five miles in the course of a day's normal work of taking care of Handsome Partner. Which certainly explained some of my tiredness at the end of the day. I still think pedometers should somehow account for climbing stairs, though!

Meanwhile, I wore it yesterday and put on about a mile from late morning till I went to bed, just sort of pottering about and processing farmshare veggies and a bit of shopping. Interesting to know this stuff.

Mine is a low tech ped., doesn't tell me the weather or my bp or the stock market or anything. It tells me miles or steps, whichever I check in to. It would do Km, but the highly advanced high tech USA is still plodding along on the old fashioned measurements. So miles or steps it is. Which is fine by me. I like simple mechanisms, less to go wrong. Words to stitch on a pillow!

How lovely that you can go for such a walk without having to travel to it. I live in suburbia and a 3km walk in any direction for see me on flat ground with no trees looking at hundreds of houses that dont care about their gardens. A walk for me has to a planned outing if it is for pleasure.

Isn't this weather glorious? Longer walks without overheating, sitting outdoors without becoming the welted target of biting hordes. Even the goats have been reveling in it...sleeping out in the paddocks instead of in the barn!